Range-Extended Vehicle

The lithium-ion battery pack for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles officially went into volume production today. The 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, containing 220 lithium-ion cells made by Korea's LG Chem, will be assembled in a 160,000-square-foot factory in Brownstown...

You have to give corporate PR guys some credit when they publish an article on the astoundingly high mileage their car got in a road test, and then dismiss the whole thing as "silly and totally unscientific." That's what Lexus magazine auto editor Clark Heideger did. When a coworker got 47.4 miles...

Toyota and GM are the auto industry's heavyweights. Each has stumbled this year; General Motors collapsed into bankruptcy and Toyota is beset with embarrassing recalls that may dent its reputation for reliability. Each also has a plug-in car coming. The 2011 Chevy Volt will hit dealers in less than...

And we thought our piece on the LA Auto Show's Volt dance was pointed. Hah! Look here. Or here, followed by here. Or here. Ouch. Like a good journalist, we wanted to know more. So we asked for an interview with Maria Rohrer, Director of Global Volt Marketing Operations at Chevrolet, to understand...

Not surprisingly, automotive journalists compete to be the first to drive the latest new cars. Some crave Chevies, others follow Ferrari. Here at GreenCarReports.com, we want to be among the first to drive electric cars and other plug-ins, new hybrids, clean diesels, and so forth. We've driven a...

Only a handful of U.S. auto shows count as important. Detroit, in January, is one; historically, New York in April has been another. But the up-and-comer is the Los Angeles Auto Show, which now occurs in late November or early December and focuses on green cars of all stripes: hybrids, electric...

We're gearing up for the Los Angeles Auto Show here at GreenCarReports, and the press releases are flying across the desk. Most of them don't apply to green car buyers and fans, but here's one worth watching. At the show, Capstone Turbine Corp. will unveil its CMT-380 concept, an extended-range...

In another life, Tony Posawatz could be a politician. He's outgoing, upbeat, a man who deftly juggles discussions of technology, green concerns, and the realities of carmaking while seeming to know everyone in the world of electric vehicles by name. Posawatz is vehicle line director for the 2011...

General Motors will follow its 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car with a production version of the Cadillac Converj concept car revealed at this year's Detroit Auto Show. It's been an open question for a while now: What will be the next vehicle to use GM's Voltec series hybrid...

It's starting to seem like tit-for-tat around here, as startup electric automakers Tesla and Fisker vie for--and get--federal- and state-funded loans and tax concessions to build future electric cars. The latest salvo, mere days after Fisker announced its purchase of a former GM plant in Delaware...

We've written before about some of the misconceptions around high-mileage and electric cars, among them that they're essentially glorified golf carts. Now the test engineers for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt have taken their  extended-range electric vehicle up the twisty 19-mile road to the top of...

The U.S. Department of Energy yesterday approved a $529 million low-interest loan to Fisker Automotive, which will start building its 2010 Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid luxury sports sedan later this year. Customer deliveries will start next May. In June, Tesla Motors received a $465 million loan for...

Since it was launched in 1997 in Japan, and 2000 in the US, the Toyota Prius has only been sold as a single body style. From 1997 to 2003, it was a subcompact four-door sedan. Since then, it has been a midsize five-door hatchback, thoroughly redesigned for 2010. Now, Toyota executives told its...

We usually recap our five most popular posts on GreenCarReports.com at the end of every month. We're a bit late for August but, hey, we had a long Labor Day too ... now we're back in business. We replaced most of July's most popular posts, with three new winners in our Top Five. Here goes: # 1: How...

The 2010 Fisker Karma will be the world's first production series hybrid, or extended-range electric vehicle, when it comes off the line late this year. Customer deliveries will start next May. Just prior to the Karma's German debut at next week's Frankfurt Auto Show, the company released emissions...

While literally hundreds of Toyota Prius owners have laid down thousands of dollars (in some cases, tens of thousands) by now for plug-in conversions, Toyota has proceeded slowly. Now it is showing what it says is the final version of its prototype Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid at the Frankfurt Motor...